


The Eternity Stratagem

by gentlezombie



Category: Scandinavian Mythology, Vellum - Hal Duncan
Genre: Canon-Typical Character Death, M/M, Pastiche, The Poetic Edda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:11:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlezombie/pseuds/gentlezombie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Through the end of a world and beyond, Jack and Puck search for a future where they both have a chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Eternity Stratagem

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AntigravityDevice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntigravityDevice/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Many thanks to AlterEgon for a last-minute beta and pikkugen for holding my hand and telling me everything was all right when I needed it the most ♥ You guys rock!

_Errata_

Puck dies in every world.

It is an immutable fact written into the skin of the universe in blood and spit and honey. From the sweet valleys of Mesopotamia to the orgone-fuelled cyberpunk future to the northern twilight of the gods, he slips from myth to myth to die, to dream, to dread, to run. And right at his heels is Jack who sometimes kills him, sometimes tries to save him and always wants him.

A combination of all three, though, is unusual even for them.

 

_Baldr’s Dreams_

The sounds of the feast echo all the way outside. The gods prefer to spend these lightless nights in their great hall, sitting on soft furs and drinking mead. He sneers at their mindless revels, the snatches of songs. For a moment, he thinks of going inside and changing the tone of the evening.

His feet take him away from the noise and the wind. Elsewhere there is a chance for sweeter taunts and a fight where no one needs to draw brute steel. It is not the first evening he has given up a spot of mischief for this more private game where even he does not know the stakes.

He enters the private chambers unannounced.

“Loki.” The form on the bed turns towards him. It is not the most enthusiastic greeting he has received.

“Baldr.” Loki performs a little bow. “What greeting is this? What is this lazing in bed when mead is drunk and songs are sung?

“Why are you here? Go to them if you want.” The blond head rises, eyes squint at the candlelight. Pretty eyes surrounded by dark clouds. The most beautiful of all gods is suffering, it seems.

“I don’t want them”, he says, sitting on the bed uninvited. Up close, he sees the weary lines on Baldr’s face. So much for eternal youth. “Would you share your troubles? I am always one to help, as everyone well knows.”

“I doubt your help is wanted much these days”, Baldr says, the corner of his mouth twitching. His lips are very red. “Your remedies tend to have a bite.”

“A healer has to be ready to cut to get to the heart of the problem.”

“Your cuts strike home too well for some. One might think the healer is after the heart and the red flowing blood.”

“I will not argue – be silent! I am capable of that, when it suits me.” A warning glance. “Tell me what ails you or I will force it out of you.”

“I am well touched.” Laughter now, smoke and honey in equal measure. “A careless one might think you cared.”

Loki leans over, rakes his fingers through the soft blond hair. He takes a good hold. “I am touching you. Now tell me.”

“I have dreams”, Baldr says. “In my dreams, I die, and the world ends in fire and blood.”

The fingers in his hair tighten, and he winces, meets the cold blue eyes.

“How?”

“There is a game, and everyone is laughing. I am laughing, and then I am dead.” Baldr shrugs, as if to say: it is a dream, what did you expect?

The image is jarring. Loki does not understand why it rattles his bones, shakes the foundations beneath his feet. There are unforeseen chasms opening. Have they found one of his sore places, a weakness to be exploited?

Baldr turns his head, impatient. Loki looks at him, and suddenly he is afraid.

“It is not the only dream.”

He pulls Loki to him by the back of his neck.

Their lips meet, and they are falling, deep into dreams uncharted by prophecy. It is happening everywhere, everywhen, in every past and future. Everything is shattered, each fragment brought to focus.

He is Loki the liar, the god of fire and mischief, son of a giant, and he is Jack, Jack the giant, Jack Flash, the fire-eyed demon, the anarchist terrorist who watches the world fuck and burn in mindless violent bliss. There is a little Jack in everyone, and a bit of everyone in Jack, and isn't his whole identity a lovely fucking orgy?

And there is Baldr, the doomed fair god of innocence and joy, but that wicked fairy glint you see when you look into his baby-blue eyes, that's Puck, and he is all for peace, love and understanding (as Jack would know) – though he rarely gets any of those things, does Thomas, the angel who runs away, the boy who dies. Whether the green-haired horned hippie Pan, the shell-shocked soldier in the Somme or the shepherd of the ancient odes, the mystery is this: he keeps smiling and running.

Something sets in place with a click, some mechanism set in motion. They have fucked in a thousand universes, but it is the first time Baldr’s fingers tangle in fire-red hair, first time Loki breathes winter into his mouth. Ice prickles on Puck’s tongue and he bites back, laughs at Jack’s face, laughs more as revenge is taken. They are gods, or close enough. What else have they to do but to drink and fuck?

Baldr took Loki to | his bed in Gladsheimr,  
they were seen by none; | wicked tongues wonder  
who did the taking | on the firelit furs.  
They will not tell us: | would you know yet more?

Ask Jack and Puck.

_Errata_

"Absolutely not", Guy says. "No more of these suicidal schemes. Remember how well it turned out in Sumer, in Greece, in Rome?"

"Absolute bullshit", Joey agrees.

Jack glares at them. Anger is a constant itch underneath his skin in this incarnation, raging, raving against this preset universe. Puck shifts in his lap, lays a hand on his neck to keep him in check. How can they not see that no is not an option?

"You can't break a cycle of death and rebirth. Continuity is the reason for its existence. It's designed to dress up the bones of the universe."

"I can do anything", says Jack Flash, dashing and defiant.

Guy sighs. "You always lose it at death, Jack."

It's true. That's when everything unravels and they're back to square one. Jack suspects Guy and Joey might have some other ideas of what to do about this clusterfuck reality, but he only wants one thing. He wants Puck to live. The universe can go fuck itself.

"It's not the same thing, though, is it?" Puck says, calm as ever. Jack has seen him die countless times, in terror or surprise or with a smile. "There’s more distance, everything’s not as connected.

It's not even really a cycle when he's only supposed to die once."

“Die once and _stay_ in the kingdom of the dead. I know you think there’s an opening there, but you don’t know that for sure”, says Guy Fox who always thinks ahead, even when he knows the universe has already out-thought him. "And it's tricky to get you inserted into a myth when the archetypes don't quite match. There might be glitches. You might not be able to get out."

If someone you love dying over and over again is not a glitch, Jack doesn’t know what it is except a fucking tragedy.

“What he means”, says Joey, “is he doesn’t think you can do it. Things don’t go very nicely in that fold.”

Joey might be a cold bastard but he is right enough.

“We’ll give it a try anyway”, Puck says quietly. “If it turns out to be one of those folds” – where he is beaten, tortured, destroyed by someone too much and not enough like Jack – “well, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.” He smiles at Jack, gives a little mocking bow. “You have my permission.”

“And that”, says Guy, “is my cue to tell you I won’t be playing in this one. I’ll help you set it up, but if you want to crash and burn and this is your plan, you do it without me.”

“Congratulations”, says Joey. “You have reached a new level of fucked up.”

Crash and burn, baby. Who ever needed a plan for that?

_Baldr's Death_

He takes the mistletoe, shapes it into an arrow. Shaping and shifting, that’s what he does; but the world around and inside him has shifted, and he feels like a passenger in his own skin. One of many. He is still Loki, but he is also Jack, all the jacks of all trades through history turned fairytale, and he is watching.

His every step is carved into the stone of these halls; all of this has happened before.

The arrow remains greenish in hue. There is a lightless pit inside of him, dark enough to give birth to monsters, and the snake of jealousy curling in his gut. He is jealous of bright Baldr who is so beloved by all the gods that they will do anything to make him happy. He hears laughter and voices, knows the silly game they have thought to chase away Baldr’s dreams and fears.

He sees Baldr among them, laughter on his lips and Idunn’s apples on his cheeks and a puckish twist to his slim hips. He wants to pierce that heart, shatter that joy, for he has a claim on the white god above anyone else. This awareness is new.

He approaches Hödr, places the arrow in the blind god’s hands. The game is this: the gods are trying out their weapons against Baldr, for every single thing in the universe has taken an oath not to hurt him.

“Would you like me to help?” he says, lays his hand on the arm of Baldr’s brother. “I can point the way. No one should be left out of the game.”

The arrow is fired; red blood flows; all the jacks come to a screeching halt.

Unimportant mistletoe, bringer of such sorrow.

The Allfather whispers a secret in his dead son’s ear before the funeral pyre is lit, and the largest of all ships takes the bright god to the underworld, to Hel.

_Lokasenna_

Then Loki entered the hall where they sat drinking, but when they saw who had come, the gods were all silent.

Jack looked at them with the eyes of the dead.

"I ask the gods for a drink of mead. Make me a place at your table, or drive me out the door."

He was given a seat and made a place at their table, for old blood-oaths still held. But there were too many voices wailing inside the friend of fire; the snake-father was reckless and soon grew drunk.

When he opens his mouth he knows how it will end. The twisted little god who has felt the shadow of desire knows how to spark a storm, and Jack has played this one before, the tactless trickster keeping track of old indiscretions.

The oldest ones always work the best: curse everyone and their mothers, remind them of the time they dressed in women’s clothes, spread wide their soft white thighs. There should be no shame in it when they are all the same, but he’s learned that’s not how it works. It only makes the insult worse.

So when he speaks, “With witches you walked, Odin Allfather, and dressed as one worked your charms among men; tell me how that fits a man”, he knows the arrow will land.

His target is not unarmed. “Rash words from one who bore children as a maid, snared a stallion, soon was heavy with a foal; tell me how that fits a man.”

A good one, and true. He cocks an eyebrow and grins, for no one can beat him at this game. Not when they care and for him it’s all the same.

“Let me tell you gods that a man you must be, great Svadilfari to snare. Had you seen such a cock like maidens mild would you all have trembled in tears.”

“The past deeds of gods never should be mentioned among men. What you did then we do not wish to know.”

He turns to priggish Frigg. She could be the key in this game of back-and-forth. She could be the one to cut the banter short.

“Odin’s wife you are though in curious lust with two of his brothers you laid. What _is_ there you do not wish to know?”

“If a son like Baldr was by my side you would not escape his wrath. A beaten dog you would slink from these halls.”

“Would you then hear what I now know of Baldr, beloved by all?” Sly and slick, mead on his tongue; that will do the trick. “One night in his chambers brave Baldr showed courage greater than mine, when with Svadilfari over green grass I run; harder was his race.”

The gods are stirring now, there’s a clatter of weapons. They do not approve of his honoring the dead.

“From his red lips I heard my name whispered in a hundred tongues, as I took him, your fair fairy son, in Odin’s house in Gladsheimr.”

He looks round the hall, dares them with the truth. The seed is sown for sure. The memory of a god who was light and good is tarnished, dragged to the mud. So they think.

He’s been smiling till now, but he does feel a twinge; his heart is not all-black yet. There’s a hollow in his chest where a fire used to be, misery beyond measure. This is why he came here armed with slander and spite, knowing they would not let him leave.

“You would also know why fair Baldr no more rides home to the hall. The arrow that flew, the blind hand that fired: for that you have Loki to thank.”

After that the gods seized Loki. He was bound with the bowels of his own son; a poisonous snake was fastened upon him so that the poison dripped on his face; and they left him there on the rocks.

There was no wife to hold a bowl over his face. When the poison fell in his eyes, he struggled so hard that the whole earth shook, and the incessant shaking of the ground undid the roots of the world.

There he is to wait until the time of the wolf and wind, when the sun grows black and the hot stars are whirled from the sky.

 

_Errata_

We travel through world's end, the end of a world. Our eight-legged steed is a beast from an ironpunk nightmare. The crude scaly plates of its back keep moving and shifting, and steam pours from the cracks as its sides bulge with the swelling of strange bellows. There is no head, but there are many teeth, broken swords stuck between the forged bones.

The beast’s rusty hooves spark the scenery as we pass the fields of the fallen, tread on shield and skin. I try not to look down. The battle is done. The land is empty. A lone raven circles overhead. Memory is mindless without thought, but we are the only thinking beings passing through this page.

We’re taking a shortcut.

I point out to Jack the nature of this beast, wink and nudge. It’s a more sober Jack riding behind me, feet firmly in stirrups, hands crossed over my waist.

“Can we forget about that?” he sighs, knowing the answer.

“Never”, I sing-song. “I’ll never let you forget the things you do for me.” Another nudge for good measure. He laughs at last.

“That was Loki. You’re getting your myths mixed up.”

I shrug. “Loki is you.” 

Jack’s face is still scarred, starburst splatter around his eyes. ~~~~

“True enough.”

He falls silent again, and I let him. Traces of the troublemaker trickster turned tragic still cling to him. What we’re seeing is his doing, and it won’t help telling him that he was simply following the script, caught up in the myth long past the point of departure.

I lean back against him, sitting cross-legged on our great beast of burden, tug at my newly green locks. There’s still a hint of hair at my chin, a few curious curls. I yelp as Jack reaches out to twist them.

“This is something new”, he says. “I like it. Maybe it’s a sign.”

“You think green is good?”

“There better be more green where we’re going”, he says, and I have to agree as we trot through the greyscale spread shot through with red.

The unwatchful dead are silent as we skip ahead.

_The green earth rises from the waves_

The world is new.

They wade through the sea of grass, Baldr and Loki, Jack and Puck, still dressed in the remnants of war. Chainmail gets caught in the reeds, funeral clothes fade in the sun.

An eagle flies over the sea, catching fish. A world without history is light, and so are their footsteps. An illusion of ease, a new beginning.

There is a place they must reach, and when they do, they see each other, approaching this crossroads in the vellum from separate points of entrance.

They grin as they meet.

“So Odin did whisper a secret in your ear, oh brightest of all the gods. And it was what we thought it was.”

“The secret of eternal life. The plan for the great escape from Hel.” Puck’s pleased as punch. He’s got all the reason in all the worlds.

“Care to share?” says Jack, pulls his insolent impish fairy to the grass.

“The eternity with you?” Puck leans over him, light hair tickling his face. The scars are gone. “Every mad man Jack of you? I already do.”

They tumble in the grass for what sure as hell isn’t the first time – they never were good at counting – but they are not on the run anymore. It is something to make sure of over and over again.

There are white flowers in Puck’s hair. Jack finds a golden disc digging into his back and tosses it away towards the shimmering sky.

There the gods found | the game-discs of old  
glittering amid the grass.  
They did not care. | They had their game  
of skin, sunlight and swords.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for requesting Vellum ♥ I might not have dared to attempt this fusion otherwise. I can only hope I did both canons some justice! I know I had way too much fun with this fic. The whole thing feels like one big inside joke – but then, that's Vellum for you...
> 
> My interpretation of the Poetic Edda is mostly based on the Bellows translation (1936) and a non-English translation. There are great differences in style between the different translations.
> 
> I have tried to recreate the feel of the poems and the poetic metre. If you want to see how the metre works, I recommend seeking any version of the Poetic Edda; the bits seen here are my own extremely unorthodox creations. There's some paraphrasing in the fic, but very little direct quotation.
> 
> Baldr has in fact been associated with Tammuz and Adonais (who are of course connected to Thomas/Puck), although the connection seems to be disputed. The connection between Jack and Loki is more flimsy – I went with the fire and anarchist tendencies.


End file.
